May 25, 2015 - Farm Pond and Play

Went fishing at a farm pond, caught some fish.  The pond is so choked up with lily pads and algae, the best way to fish it is to cast a weightless plastic worm past the weeds.

Also, if you are looking for a theatrical extravaganza, come to Brandy Station Fire Hall this coming Friday, Saturday, or Sunday and see KINGDOM!

May 3, 2015 - Delmarva Pond

After doing laundry, I had 15 minutes to kill, so why not go fishing over at the Delmarva Pond?

Why not?  Snakes in the grass, that's why:

I gave my friend the garter snake a wide berth and fished around the pond.

There are still a bunch of small sunfish here, but I was able to hook more than I had been able to in the past, which made me think that perhaps the average size was increasing.

But what would be responsible for larger sunfish?  Maybe a predator in the pond?  Like, oh I don't know, a largemouth bass, for example?!

Well that's exciting.

May 2, 2015 - Accokeek Creek (Tributary to the Potomac)

For the last year, I've been looking forward to a new access to the Potomac River via Accokeek and Potomac Creeks.  A couple of weeks ago, the hand-carry boat launch finally opened.  So over I went to give it a try:

 Unfortunately, the closing hours are not fisherman-friendly.  If the gate was closed an hour after sunset, it'd be great.

The ADA accessible boat launch thing was a new experience:

The river was turbid, I didn't catch any fish.

April 30, 2015 - Remiss

I have been terribly remiss, not having written about my adventures in some time.

Spring has worn on, the early chirps of the spring peepers have turned into the incessant din of all God's creatures vying for attention.  Hold on, I misspoke, we still have the cicada's to look forward to.

In any case, the primary reason I've been so terribly remiss is my involvement in a local theater (or theatre) production of a children's play, which has consumed a not insignificant amount of time.  And the remainder of the time, I've either been fishing, asleep, at work, or eating, trying to satisfy a whacked out version of Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

But what do you care?  You're here to see pictures of nature subdued, of fish suspended in midair by their mouths.  And I don't disappoint!

Of note lately are the swallows:


 I don't know whether they are barn swallows or tree swallows; I've seen some sitting in trees but maybe if there was a barn at the waters edge they'd preferentially sit on that, so I wouldn't say that my identification is definite.

But I've been catching a few fish, although it's been slow.  Caught 2 crappies on yellow curly tail, retrieved slow this past Sunday:

March 29, 2015 - Mountain Run Lake

Put in at Mountain Run Lake at about 3:30, water temp, in the sun, was 54 degrees!

Fished a while using a plastic craw, tried a crappie jig under a bobber for a while, went back to the car to get a fly rod and ultralight spinning tackle, and rest my legs.

At about 6:30, caught my only fish of the day on a small spinner.  Took out at 7:30.

 The cormorants are here again, same tree as last year:

March 20 & 26, 2015 - Dead Carp Ditch

I went fishing after work March 20 and 26 down at the Cesspool, which is the pond at Yowell Meadow Park, which I've rechristened Dead Carp Ditch.  I don't know why I bother fishing here, seeing as its waters are apparently toxic to all piscatorial forms of life. 

Dead carp:

Dead catfish:

Dead sunfish:

I assume the amount of trash and goose shit that flows in here is part of the cause of the fish kills.  This park is sort of a dump.  Even the Town of Culpeper seems to phone it in a bit, categorizing a pay phone and "Soft Drink and Power-Aide Machine" as "amenities."  The park is apparently a great place for people wired on caffeine to set up drug deals, although that demographic isn't specifically identified in the Culpeper tourism website.

Hold on!  Maybe I'm being unfair, I saw an immature snapping turtle crawling away from the pond, trying to escape downstream:

Also, there appear to be crawfish here:

But most surprising, was this 10-12 inch largemouth bass I got on a brown flecked grub (on the 26th.)

March 22, 2015 - Mountain Run Lake

Went fishing out at Mountain Run Lake in the late afternoon.


Water was still sub-50, caught two fish, one of which I got a picture of:

 Got him on a crawdad:

The second fish was on a spinner, and was slightly larger.  Didn't get a picture of him.

By the way, in the event that it has never occurred to you, think of the word "sub-par."  It means less-than-good, substandard, shitty.  But in golf, being under par is a good thing.  So are golfers insane and ignorant, or are the rest of us?